The Winged Victory of Samothrace
A goddess lands on the prow of a warship, her robes whipped by the wind. She has no head and no arms, and she is still the most dramatic arrival in the Louvre.
A goddess has just landed. Her great wings are still spread behind her, her body leans into the wind, and her thin robe is pressed against her as if soaked by sea spray. She has no head and no arms, and it hardly matters. From the foot of the stairs below her, she seems to be moving.
What you are looking at
This is Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, carved in marble during the Hellenistic period, the centuries after Alexander the Great. Most scholars place it in the early second century BC, though the exact date is debated.
She stands on the prow of a warship, carved from a different, grey marble, as if she has just descended from the sky to crown a victory at sea. The sculptor carved the drapery in deep, flowing folds that cling to the body in some places and fly free in others, a technique often called wet drapery. It lets you read both the wind and the figure beneath it.
The statue is far larger than life and was built from separate blocks, with the wings carved apart from the body and fitted on. That combination of scale, weight and apparent lightness is what makes it so astonishing in person.
The story
The island of Samothrace, in the northern Aegean, was home to the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, a religious centre known for its mystery cult, whose initiates were believed to gain protection, including from dangers at sea. The statue was set up there, high on a hillside overlooking the sanctuary, most likely to celebrate a naval victory.
Which victory, and whose, is still uncertain.
Many historians connect it with the island of Rhodes, a great naval power of the time, partly because of the stone of the ship and the style of the carving. The name of the sculptor is not known for certain either.
In 1863 a French diplomat and amateur archaeologist, Charles Champoiseau, found the body of the statue in pieces on the island and sent it to Paris. The ship-shaped base was identified and brought over in the following years, and in 1884 the reassembled monument was installed at the top of the Louvre's grand Daru staircase, where it has stood ever since, apart from interruptions such as its evacuation for safety during the Second World War.
What most people don't know
Her right hand was found much later, in 1950, by archaeologists working on Samothrace. It is now shown in a glass case near the statue. Fingers from the hand had turned up earlier, and the pieces helped scholars imagine her gesture, though how the arms were held is still argued over.
The statue was designed to be seen mainly from one side, her left front, which is how most visitors approach her on the stairs. That side is finished in more detail than the back. The sculptor knew where people would stand, and carved for them.
The monument was restored and cleaned in 2013 and 2014. The work removed old grime, revealed the colour of the marble more clearly, and reassembled the base, which had been put together in the nineteenth century with some inaccuracies.
Why people love it
She is pure movement in stone. Most marble statues stand still; this one seems caught in the second between flying and landing, and the wind in her robes is so convincing that people feel it. Her missing head and arms, rather than spoiling her, turn the whole body into the expression. With no face to read, you read the energy instead.
Her setting does half the work. Placed at the top of a great staircase, lit from above, she is seen the way she was meant to be seen on Samothrace: from below, rising, as if arriving. Few works of art anywhere are staged so dramatically, and visitors remember the moment they first looked up and saw her.
She has become a symbol of triumph itself. Plaster casts and copies stand in art schools, universities and museums around the world. In the 1957 film Funny Face, Audrey Hepburn, playing a model in a photo shoot, sweeps down the Daru staircase in front of her in a red gown, one of the best-known scenes ever filmed at the Louvre. The goddess she represents, Nike, has lent her name to a sportswear company, and a figure of the goddess formed the original football World Cup trophy; and the statue is still the image most people picture when they hear the word victory.
How to see it
The Winged Victory stands at the top of the Daru staircase in the Louvre in Paris, one of the museum's most famous views. Approach her slowly from the foot of the stairs, so that she rises above you as you climb, the way the original visitors on Samothrace would have looked up at her on the hillside.
At the top, walk around her. Look at the folds of drapery between her legs, cut so deep they almost seem to be moving, and at the way the wings, which must weigh a great deal, still read as feathers. Then find the case with her hand. The Louvre is very busy, so arrive early or late in the day, and check the museum's website before you go, since galleries sometimes close for works.
